Climate Modelling

The Department of "Climate Modelling" belongs to Faculty 1 of the University of Bremen and is part of the Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP). In cooperation with the department "Earth System Model Evaluation and Analysis" located at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the department analyses Earth system model simulations of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) in combination with observations to better understand and project the climate system and anthropogenic climate change.

The evaluation of ESMs with observations is crucial for an improved process understanding of the climate system and is also a vital prerequisite for more trustworthy climate projections of the 21st century needed as basis for guidelines in climate policy. The group’s tasks in particular include the development and application of efficient methods for ESM evaluation and the development of new numerical tools to analyse large data sets.

The department is strongly linked to international research activities within the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), for example with substantial contributions to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), and contributes regularly to international climate and ozone assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Our research topics are:

Analysis of Earth system model simulations in combination with observations to better understand the processes of climate change and the climate system.

Development of ‚Emergent Constraints‘ to constrain key climate feedbacks in the Earth System with observations

Constraining multi-model climate projections with observations

Evaluation and documentation of systematic biases in Earth System models using observations

Quantification of climate forcings and feedbacks

Predictability of decadal climate simulations

Development of a diagnostic tool for efficient routine evaluation of ESMs with observations

Development and application of diagnostics and quantitative metrics for an improved process-oriented model evaluation

Identification of model shortcomings and recommendations for model improvements

Contributions to international Model Intercomparison Projects (coordination, model simulations, and analysis), in particular to CMIP.

Our main tools and data are:

The ESMValTool for routine and improved evaluation of Earth System models with observations